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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9316114" data-attributes="member: 907">I have a few problems with having strongish magic items for sale (potions and scrolls and such are a different issue).The first is that it creates an equivalence between economic power and personal power – if you're rich, you can get powerful items, and if you have powerful items you are, in a sense, rich. This creates weird situations, such as <a href="https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0158.html" target="_blank">making banditry infeasible</a> and creating a cycle where you adventure to get money to buy magic items that make you better at adventuring to get more money to buy better magic items and so on.The other is that it turns even mid- to high-level characters into penny pinchers. So, you just returned to Waterdeep after trudging through the Mire of Dead Men for a month, culminating in killing a dragon that was bossing around a tribe of lizard folk, and now you're laden with gold and gems and stuff... and instead of spending the next tenday living it up and getting it on with all the fine ladies/gentlemen at the Purple Palace, you're going to find a cheap inn, because who wants to spend money on wine and orgies when you could put that money toward the "upgrade my sword to +3" fund? <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em_ijmqVkAAf5tL.jpg" target="_blank">Bah</a>!I think Earthdawn has some neat ideas in this regard, where minor magic items can be found for sale, but the good stuff are what's known as Thread Items. These are items with specific history, and in order to unlock their powers you need to both spend XP, learn about aspects of the item's history, and sometimes even perform specific deeds. 3e tried something similar with Weapons of Legacy, and Pathfinder 2 has something along those lines with Relics, but both are handicapped by an obsession with game balance that forces said cool things to be kept in line with other items. That said, I haven't really had the opportunity to either play or run Earthdawn, but thread items strike me as a strong spice best used sparingly, lest the whole campaign becomes about upgrading the party's Cool Stuff.</blockquote>

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